Fidelity in an age of promiscuity

THE title may refer more immediately to married couples who are committed to their spouses for a lifetime of love. But it can actually be applied to all of us also, single or married, young or old, healthy or not, etc.

That’s because in the end we all have to be faithful to something or someone who, if I have to say things bluntly, is none other than God, our Creator and Father. Some people may choose to be faithful only to their own selves, but that’s another story that we can take up some other time.

We cannot help but live some degree of fidelity because by nature we are a relational being. We are always connected to someone and there is always some kind of hierarchy in this network of relations in which we live. And one task we have to do is to find the place that properly belongs to us. This is the context of fidelity.

We need to be more aware of our duty to be faithful, especially in our present times when forms of promiscuity are increasing and often in a most subtle way. We need to know what is involved in this duty to be faithful.

We also need to know how to distinguish promiscuity from the legitimate attitude that respects and even fosters tolerance of an increasingly diversified world, or more, even taking advantage of such diversity.

We are in tricky times. And so we have to be discerning as we pursue the real and ultimate goals of our life, and everything in it. Here lies the seed of the secret of fidelity. It’s never a passive, laid-back virtue. Rather, it is active and dynamic.

We can only be faithful if we work for it consciously, keeping the right priorities that should be set out by the objective laws that govern us as persons, members of the community in all aspects—social, economic, political, cultural, etc.—and ultimately as children of God.

Our main problem is that we often take this duty to know who we really are and the laws that properly govern us for granted. We often allow ourselves to be led mainly by the unreliable swings of our emotions and passions, the social and ideological trends, and the changing economic and political weathers, etc.

These are never absolute guides. At best, they give some light and impulse, and they can condition and exert some influence on the different aspects of our life, but they are in need to be rooted on an absolute, permanent ground—the terra firma who is God.

Fidelity requires of us nothing less than the genuine impulse of love, the love that ultimately comes from God, the author, pattern and end of love. It requires an intimate relation with God.

When a couple’s love refuses to conform itself to this love, and prefers to linger on the bodily aspects of love, or some other considerations only, fidelity may survive more of an accident than by intention.

Same with those engaged in other fields of human endeavors—business, politics, academics, culture, philosophy, theology, etc. If their main inspiration is not God, but something or someone else, they will go wayward sooner or later.

This love of God is something we can always have, if we are open to it in the first place, and then work hard to keep it. There will be difficulties, of course, but none that could not be overcome if we just keep our faith and love for God.

This love of God is expressed first when springing from our faith in God we obey his commandments, even if such commandments may give us temporary difficulties. It is developed by having recourse to God in the sacraments themselves and in abiding prayer.

This matter about prayer should be understood well, because many misconceptions distort its real character. Prayer is simply keeping our mind and heart in God’s presence, allowing them to act and interact with God according the circumstances of the moment.

This is how we can keep ourselves vitally strong and dynamic, giving us a good vision of things and the capacity to discern what God really wants of us, especially when we are faced with many so-called legitimate but competing choices, tempting us to be promiscuous.

This is how can be truly faithful, enjoying a sense of meaning and direction in our life, a sense of confidence and security amid the many vagaries of life. We need to cultivate and spread this lifestyle and culture.

Becoming contemplative

THIS is no big deal actually. We have to disabuse ourselves from the thought that to be contemplative is an impossible dream. We are meant to be contemplatives, to live our life, right where we are at the moment, with God, seeing things, thinking and doing things with him.

            Obviously, right now, many people are asking whether this is really a goal for us to reach, whether it is feasible, whether it is worth the effort. And that’s because the current world culture is still unfamiliar, if not averse, to this truth that needs to be worked out.

            We have to resolve this problem. And we have to start by knowing exactly who and what we are. Are we just rational beings guided only by our senses and at most by our intelligence, and meant only to have an earthly and temporal shelf-life? Or we are more than that?

            Do we believe that we are really the image and likeness of God, and made children of his through his grace, meant to share our life with God not only for a time but for eternity? How can we prove this?

            I believe the root of today’s crisis can be traced to these questions. The answers have been varied, and lately they tend more toward considering man as a mere natural being bound only to space and time.

            If there’s any mention of God in that frame of mind, it’s more for formalism or because such reference can give some solutions to temporal problems, like our physical and mental health.

            This was what I gathered from two news items that recently appeared in an American newspaper, known for its very liberal and secular worldview. In one item, it said that believing in God, doing some prayers, can give relief to people with depression. The other said that going to church from time to time can do us some good.

            Of course, with the way God, faith and religion are framed in those articles, some health effects of some religious practices are highlighted, while disregarding other aspects involved. And so those articles did not lack critics who reacted strongly.

            One critic said that religion is a dangerous thing. It is, in fact, according to him, a mental illness, and that whatever good effects religion can give, as mentioned in the articles, are at best only apparent and can be attained also by other more reliable means—like talking with brilliant people, having regular injections of hormones like endorphin, etc.

            What to me emerged into the open from those articles and their reactions is the fact that many people have a very poor, reduced understanding of man. Man, to them, is simply a being with earthly and temporal shelf-life. There is no after-life, nothing spiritual in us, much less, anything destined to the supernatural in us.

            That’s the reason why we have to highlight nowadays the spiritual and supernatural dimension of our life, and one consequence of which is that we are meant to have a contemplative life—a life of faith, of abiding conversation with God, of living life with him.

            Much of the problem about showing the spiritual and supernatural dimension of our life stems from the ignorance many people have about how to live a spiritual and supernatural life, how to be contemplatives in the middle of the world.

            But this should be no problem, because if we really believe there is God and that God is our Creator and Father who sent his son to reveal to us who God is and who we really are, then we can easily make the proper conclusions to guide us as to the practical implications of these truths.

            The crisis is due to the fact that many of us are not doing our part in relation to this truth. This truth calls us to believe, to pray, to acquire a certain lifestyle where God becomes the root, the center and the end of everything.

            The crisis is due to the fact that we prefer to be guided only by our senses and by material, earthly values, making them the only reality in life. Nothing beyond them.

            The increasingly volatile crisis can somehow be tackled if we really make a consistent and convincing testimony of an authentic spiritual and contemplative life right in the middle of the world.

            God is everywhere, and he waiting for us to engage with him all the time, and usually in most ordinary events of our daily life. If we correspond to this, then we start to live a contemplative life.

Another Christ, Christ himself

THAT’S what we are all meant to be. We have to be “alter Christus,” if not “ipse Christus,” another Christ, if not Christ himself. This may sound fantastic and delusional, but that is the naked truth about ourselves. We may not be aware of it, or worse, may not like it, but that’s how God, our Creator and Father, has designed us.

That’s why, at one point, Christ, the son of God who became man to offer us the way, the truth and the life, told his apostles, the epitome of how Christ’s believers and disciples should be: “He who hears you, hears me, and he who despises you, despises me, and he who despises me, despises him who sent me.” (Lk 10,16)

Christ went further. He told his apostles: “Whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these, because I am going to the Father. And whatever you ask in my name, I will do...If you ask anything of me in my name, I will do it.” (Jn 14,12-14)

We need to deeply meditate on these words, words of faith, the ultimate source of truth about God and about ourselves, so that they become the animating principle of our life, our thoughts, words, and deeds.

They certainly are mysterious words, impenetrable by our human intelligence alone. More than to be understood, they need to be believed. Thus, more than wracking our brains to figure out the whys and wherefores of these words, we need to make an act of faith.

We need to believe in God and trust in his words, articulated by Christ and re-echoed with living effectiveness all throughout time in the Church. We need to be like Peter who, when he asked that he goes to Christ walking on the water, believed and started to walk also on the water, until he wavered in his faith and then started to sink.

It’s all a matter of faith which is not a matter of going against our reason and senses, but rather of going beyond them, avoiding being trapped and entangled in them. That’s our problem. We tend to confine ourselves to what our senses can discern and our reason can understand.

This simply cannot be, since we all know that the reality that we have to contend with and in which we are living every moment is filled with mysteries. Even the most obvious things around us, if we look at them more closely, are actually shrouded in mysteries.

This, of course, is not a call to go into superstitions, going on a rampage by indiscriminately exercising acts of faith not based on an objective and living reality. Rather, this is to listen to the God incarnate who is Christ and who is extended all throughout time in the Church established and duly empowered by Christ himself, in spite of the warts and all of the human elements involved in the Church.

That’s why, the Church always pounds on the need for us to strengthen and nourish our faith in Christ, to such a point that we become “alter Christus,” if not “ipse Christus.” She offers the doctrine of our faith, the sacraments and the liturgy, and the hierarchy.

We need to have the humility to let go of the undue grip that our senses and reason can have over us. Yes, we always need them. We cannot be without them. But we simply cannot be restricted by them. By allowing ourselves to be entirely dominated by them narrows and even distorts our appreciation of things.

The problem of those who are into agnosticism and atheism is that they make their senses and reason the primary and ultimate arbiter of what is true or false, what is real or fake, what is good or evil, moral or immoral. They cannot seem to detach themselves from that stranglehold.

We need to be humble to be simple and obedient, and thus put ourselves in condition to be united with God. It’s pride that leads us to complications and disobedience, and separates us from God and isolates us from others. It’s pride that leads us to live in a fantasy.

Again, like Peter, we should just obey what Christ, and now the Church, would tell us, so that even if things appear impossible, we can expect to have a bountiful catch of fish and the multiplication of the loaves of bread and fish.

This is how we can become “alter Christus,” if not “ipse Christus.”